Certain work environments lend themselves to a shared or centralized dictation system ("CDS"), implemented on one or more computers, for helping a group of workers maintain records about the group's services, projects, products, customers and suppliers. The health care industry is an example of such work environments. Multiple doctors and other health care providers serve the same patient with each of the several providers frequently requiring access to a patient's records during hospital stays, for example, including the most recently added information. A CDS helps solve those and related record keeping problems, including keeping track of billing information.
CDSs available from many different vendors are employed in hospitals, health maintenance organizations ("HMOs") and clinics, for example. Doctors and other health care workers use telephones to dial a CDS and record dictated information about a patient and, at least with some CDSs, to enter alpha numeric data pertaining to a patient into a data field associated with the dication session. The data is entered into the CDS through a dialing keypad of a telephone.
CDSs are accessed by telephone over a standard telephone line by dialing an address of a CDS into a hospital's private branch exchange ("PBX") switch or, in some cases, into a public telephone company ("TELCO") switch. The TELCO switch is required when the shared CDS is located remotely from the facility housing the health care workers. Cordless phones and cellular phones have been used with CDS systems. In health care environments, or campuses, the noise levels associated with cordless phones results in poor voice recordings on the CDS. In the case of cellular phones, their performance in heath care campuses, in particular, are frequently not satisfactory because these phones interfere with diagnostic and patient life support equipment.
Typically, a doctor sets up and conducts a dictation session with a CDS from a dictation station or a standard telephone located at a nurse's station, doctor's lounge or the like, often deliberately away from the patient. The doctor dials at the keypad the switch address for the CDS and, when a connection is established to the CDS, enters a user identification number, a patient identification number and other administrative and billing information using the 0-9, * and # keys of a standard dialing keypad or the 0-9, *, #, A, B, C and D keys of an extended, standard dialing keypad. The extended keypad is preferred for use with CDSs which employ the A-D within their command set. The CDS issues voice prompts to the doctor requesting the foregoing information. Thereafter, a dictation session is started with dictation control commands generated by pressing the keys on the standard keys of a dialing keypad. For example, a dictation session is started by the doctor pressing the # key and stopped by releasing the # key. Other dictation commands including "rewind", "fast forward", "pause" and "play" are invoked by pressing other keys on the keypad. The DTMF tone signal associated with a key press is interpreted by the CDS as a dictation command and is context dependent. The assignment of particular keys among a dialing keypad to particular dictation commands is, for the most part, unique to the vendor of the CDS. Me l s of each CDS command and its associated dialing key, for a given CDS, is referred to as the CDS's command set or list.